According to my experience it does not matter if you send a rider to the break or not. I would say that the AI chases 95% of all breaks but 97% if you have a rider in there.
Also it depends on the race and/or stage. I was playing with Europcar and in the TdF the other riders in the break were much stronger than my rider. So the tactics of wroblitz would not work, because if the peloton does not chase, then the other riders would just leave my rider behind in the last 20 - 40 km. But in a mountain stage I was able to win solo with Rolland.
You should not forget two things:
1) In reality the "break of the day" does rarely reach the finish line first.
2) The game would be boring if the AI would chase all breaks. Like this you have to do some work:
2.a) Send a rider with the break.
2.b) Watching the gap of the break and chase them if the AI does not do it.
I tend to agree with Lachi, it's very rare that the break of the day will produce the winner.
If you want a good test, try some races were you don't take part at all in breakaways and don't try to bring the bunch back. A good sample would be to look at the results of the management game, since the reporter is not involved in the race at all...
Lachi wrote:
According to my experience it does not matter if you send a rider to the break or not. I would say that the AI chases 95% of all breaks but 97% if you have a rider in there.
I wouldn't agree with that there's definitely some relation to player's riders in breakaway (and it's way greater than 2%). Anyway how you came up with those figures? Have you written down results of 100 AI breakaways or these are just your feelings from the game? Cuz that's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna carry on with my career and write down every breakaway (AI nad mine) and take results of each one of them (if that was chased or not), as I'm pretty sure there's a big difference between AI and player's breakaways. However I would agree that 97% (+/-) of player's breakaways are chased.
There's actually another annoying thing. Sometimes you have a breakaway and other (AI) riders start to join it, let say there's two leaving the peloton, then one, then another three and most of the time peloton doesn't react but try to be one of them and see what will happen.
I would never be so stupid to count them. What would it get me?
I forgot to mention that the AI acts differently if one of your riders is a favorite for the stage win. It will lower the chances that the AI chases the break. But that should be obvious. If you play HTC and Cavendish is participating in the race, then the peloton might not work on any of the flat stages like in real life.
If you really want to count it, then you have to play a career with the lowest team possible, so that your roster and actions do not interfere. Also I was only talking about 3D races.
What would it give you? Figures that you're using baseless now. I was about to do it in my Geox career but then you'll probably refute my results so I will do like you suggest - I'll take some 2 star team and do few stages with them. I'm pretty sure that it will be the same.